North Shore Tax driver Behzad Saidy refused to take Bruce Gilmour and his dog from a West Vancouver coffee shop to Gilmour's Vancouver home in January 2006, saying his Muslim religion prevented him from associating with dogs because they're "unclean."
I have no scientific knowledge to offer in settling this question either way. My only arguments for an old universe are aesthetic. It simply delights me to contemplate that the wonder we see around us may have been created by such slow and tiny incremental steps--swirling about, not with protons and electrons or even in the murky layers of existence physicists call quantum indeterminacy, but in mystical undiscovered (and perhaps undiscoverable) layers of reality below that--that it almost seems that each particular creative act could have been an accident--a stray note on a string: out of tune and out of time. But, taken together, the trillions upon trillions of minute waves of the Conductor's baton have given us our unspeakably intricate symphony of symphonies of symphonies, which could not have arisen any other way than by His constant loving will.
As against that, "Bang! There’s a planet; Bang! There’s an amoeba; Bang! There’s a dinosaur; Bang! There’s a man," seems rather a crude way for God to have gone about things.
As for Adam and Eve, my own pet theory is that Adam was a product of evolution, but that Eve was born of an act of special creation. This implies I "believe" (that's too strong a word, actually) in evolution, but not in the mechanism of natural selection of random (undirected) gene mutations which I find ludicrous. That is to say, Adam was created from mud (if some protozoa and some proto-chimps weren't intermediate steps who can say?) and then had supernatural life breathed into him. But Eve was conceived whole, just as the Blessed Virgin was conceived holy.
Subject: Re: Adolfo, I think I'm in love with you.I think this first line, "Of course you are..." is very sweet so I didn't say anything about it. But I was nastier in my email reply--I mean more an ass (ah, still a long way to go):
Of course you are...it's a natural reaction to meeting me.
Trust me, I understand your posts. Some are quite funny, others miss the mark. Many times, however, they remind me of someone who's just talking to hear himself talk.
In any case, hope being a smart ass is working for you in life. I have found that the endearing quality it first engenders sours very quickly.
God bless,
Adolfo
Adolfo, my beamish boy:
"Trust me, I understand..." Not always, apparently. The "trust me" assurance doesn't engender confidence. Do you worry about the sin of pride? I do: all the time.
"...just talking to hear himself talk..." Really! That describes almost all the commenters on Mark's blog. At least I'm terse.
"I have found..." Ah. You were once a smart ass like me. I get it. Maybe one day I'll be like you and save Mark's combox readers (and the world) from people like me.
love,
a cricket
Lines written on March 19
The Orbs are silent, yet if one star,
alone may guess of who you are,
no man who bides in Adam's wake may know.
In darkness you arise and toil,
for Master who in darkness coil;
In darkness, home - you to darkness go.
You furnish board for those who starve,
and for the lame the step you carve,
the altar built is but for never wed
In living wood intricacies,
are wrought for but the blind to see;
In sturdy pine the ark but for the dead.
And in the night, the prayer you raise
is, like the suff'ring prophet's days,
delivered deaf and empty, dry and cold.
The lamb is lost, its love in vain,
and bitterness will now remain,
long, long as the vain limb and mind grow old.
Gnarlèd feet tread dusty sand,
with tool borne by gnarlèd hand;
now bravely face this day your blackest hour
But turn, the angel speaks: how could
your gnarlèd stick of long dead wood
burst into flower?
